There won’t be any Labour Day parades this weekend, due to physical distancing. Instead, trade unions in Canada will celebrate workers’ annual day with online events and other COVID-aware activities. But the absence of physical crowds should not be taken as some kind of metaphor for unions’ declining visibility. To the contrary, the pandemic actually corresponds with a surprising rebound in unions’ size and importance. There’s nothing like a crisis, it seems, to remind workers that when times are tough it helps to have a powerful ally at your back.
Thirteen groups representing 180,000 post-secondary students across the country are backing a call by SFU’s student union for the federal government to reconsider the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
TransLink has been cutting bus service for years. This Labour Day most cutbacks are in Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond and North Vancouver.
Totally suspended until 2021 are Route Nos. 32, 44, 143, 258, and 480.
Frequency on other bus routes will be cut back by 10 to 33%. (Changing from every 10 mins to 15 mins or from every 20 mins to every 30 mins is a 33% cut.)
An Indigenous Advisory Committee may be comprised of "respected voices in their communities," but it's unclear how much of a say they'll have during discussions about future energy projects.
The Canada Energy Regulator announced the committee last week.
The Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline is spilling into drinking water aquifers, on sacred sites, and feeding catastrophic climate change, and this pipeline wouldn’t be possible without major insurers backing the project.
I hope all of you are doing OK with the pandemic we find ourselves in.
I am writing because the Minister of Fisheries has a critical decision that will influence the future of the Fraser River sockeye and all species of BC wild salmon. The 2020 Fraser sockeye forecast return is much lower than last year, which was the lowest in the history of Canada. We are watching extinction in play.
[Very interesting. I'm wondering when the other shoes might start dropping. Those shoes could include evolving employment insurance into a "benefit" too small to actually live on, thus forcing people to take low-wage jobs. Or, it might transform, slowly or quickly, into what right-wingers want--a catch-all payment that replaces free health care, education, and other social services, which can then be privatised and charge fees. Gene McGuckin - ecosocialistsvancouver.org]
